Road demon took Christmas break
The holiday death angel claimed the lives of fewer persons on the nation’s road this year, data from the Road Safety Unit has revealed. There were no road deaths recorded on Christmas Day this year, compared with three last year. The data indicate that 14 persons died on the 10 public holidays observed last year compared to nine fatalities this year.
This Labour Day was the deadliest on the roads, accounting for three deaths. Two persons died in crashes on Good Friday, and one each on Independence Day, Emancipation Day, Easter Monday and New Year’s Day.
Meanwhile, 316 being persons have been killed on the roads since January. Some 268 were males and 48 were females.
“We are appealing to drivers to cut their speed and look out for vulnerable road users, never overtake on a bend or at a junction or unnecessarily; never drive in a manner that will prove offensive to other road users,” director of the Road Safety Unit, Kenute Hare, said. “I think that you have tardiness in different aspects of the Force, or different parts of the Force, like you would have tardiness anywhere at all. It is human beings that you are dealing with. You have some [officers] that are very professional and some that are not,” Christopher Townsend told THE WEEKEND STAR. He said that from his interactions with members of the police force, he notices that there is greater professionalism in certain areas of the Jamaica Constabulary Force than others. “For example, at the Fraud
“They are a little bit more civil with the way they conduct their investigations and the way how they treat accused persons. In other areas, you have police officers who deal with clients with extreme disrespect and treating them like animals,” he continued.
However, he admits that the unprofessionalism does not apply to a wide cross section of the Force.
“Even at a station level, you find some officers at the station who treat the clients or accused persons in a humane fashion and take the families through the different steps of the different processes, while you have some that tell them ‘move and gweh, yu can’t see yu pickney’. So it does depend and it varies from officer to officer,” he said.